


The Grace of Waiting

by OrangeBlossoms



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/F, Grief, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-18 18:36:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18124979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrangeBlossoms/pseuds/OrangeBlossoms
Summary: Sumia builds a life in the wake of Grima's defeat.





	The Grace of Waiting

She doesn’t mind waiting. 

That’s what she says when the topic comes up and friends glance at each other askance, as if she doesn’t see the way their gazes search for anything that isn’t her or how they shift their weight from one foot to the other. Springtime demands her focus anyway. The Exalt’s granted her a plot of land just outside of Ylisstol and she’s doing her best to make it feel like home so she can get her fledgling pursuit off the ground. 

It’s the longest year of her life, but somehow it still passes in the blink of an eye. Then the following spring turns to summer and her hands are full with what some of the last of the old guard call a miracle. Ylisse didn’t only lose most of her airborne knights and all their expertise, but their mounts as well. 

They’re finicky creatures. That’s what everyone—from the retired knights to the people who saw one once in a field or against a cloud-mottled sky—like to say. It’s common knowledge in Ylisse where the winged mounts adorn the signs of inns and the sigils and banners of several great houses. 

Finicky. Difficult. A challenge. She’s heard enough doubts from those who don’t know her any more than they know how to mind their manners. When she’s out in the fields though, none of that matters. 

She’s been working on this for years with help from friends on the ground and in high places alike. Any towns they stopped in with tame pegasi, her and Robin would mark on a map. The two of them used to stay up late on nights when Robin couldn’t sleep, whispering plans in the dark. Even on the road when the commander needed his tactician by his side, Robin would make the time. 

She joined the Exalt and his small entourage during the first months after Grima’s defeat as she began to assemble a flock. Sumia’s own personal tactician was playing a longer game than she realized. An off-hand comment from Cordelia during a brief stop on her way back to Ylisstol hits her right in the chest. The blow is as staggering as the time she took an arrow to the shoulder, the scar remaining despite quick work from the princess. 

_Our tactician really thought of everything, didn’t she?_

Sumia doesn’t plummet until Cordelia’s left with a report on the newest members of Ylisse’s Pegasus knight teams. There aren’t enough flowers in all the gardens of Ylisse for her to worry between her fingers as she plucks away the possibilities one-by-one.

Foals don’t start flying for three months, but they’re quick on their feet from the get-go, chasing across the meadows in gaits that shift from gangly romps to confident strides, the brashness of youth on full display. Cynthia helps when she’s not flying on missions herself. She’s in her own kind of holding pattern, caught between two worlds and Sumia wonders if she’ll slip away as well, erased from this time, but indelibly imprinted on her memory. 

She finds traces of Robin in the small things. A shirt she used to wear that no longer holds her scent. Old notes from a skirmish Sumia thinks she remembers, but maybe it’s just the mind’s tendency to fill in the gaps. There is a room of shelves with so many books that some are placed in teetering stacks on the floor, others lining the walls. They find their way into other spaces until she gets hit with the periodic itch to organize. Sometimes she pages through the ones that belonged— _belong_ —to Robin and imagines the conversations they will have. 

The goddess spoke to them all that day, but the more she chases the memory, the faster it fades. She has to believe in this gambit or their hopes won’t come to fruition. So, she tends to flowers and watches as the foals fold their wings after their first flight, their mothers preening the feathers splayed at odd angles as many also took their first great stumbles. Sumia’s there with a staff that she no longer needs to reserve for fallen comrades.

_I don’t mind waiting._

Not because it’s always true, but because it’s necessary. Each step towards her own future is fulfilling a promise they made. 

When visitors tell her she’s doing so well, their true meaning hidden behind false smiles, she endures that, too. Often, she sends them away a little earlier, sometimes with a pie or a fortune. The petals scatter across the front porch where she speaks her piece, the broom she uses to sweep them away the final signal that she’s tired of the company, no matter how well-meaning. 

The princess—she reminds Sumia to ‘just call her Lissa’—writes on occasion as they travel across Ylisse. Lissa’s started to take trips of her own as Chrom’s presence is required in the capital. He has a young daughter to raise, after all. 

There isn’t a warning when the waiting ends. 

She’s stayed up all night with a sick foal after sending her assistants home. When the first group returns in the morning, she’s barely able to bring herself to eat something before tottering off to nap part of the day away, instructing them in her best captain’s voice to come get her at the slightest change in the foal’s status.

A rough shove wakes her and continues to shake her shoulder even as she bolts upright. 

“Mom! Mom!” the voice whispers despite the absence of any other dreamers.

“Morgan?” 

“You gotta get up!” he says with the same intensity. “Come outside.” 

She shoos him away once he’s confirmed she’s not being summoned over the foal and eases into a different set of work clothes than what she wore the night before. Morgan has always been excitable as long as she’s known him, delighted by all things big and small. He makes regular trips from Ylisstol where he’s studying magic. This is no different, she thinks.

Her next thought goes to how she will adjust her meal plans with another mouth to feed at dinner as she pulls open the door, the light so bright she has to blink back tears. Her knees still hurt from spending the night on the ground and in the hay. She’s stopped wondering if she’s too young for the kind of aches her work can create, some chores more demanding than the worst of the practice drills. 

When she sees her, her legs tremble and she doesn’t trust herself to stand, doesn’t trust herself to not stumble down the front steps. There are others present, but that’s all in the periphery as they fade into the gray white of an overcast sky. She starts forward, unsure of her footing, uncertain it’s not a dream. Her feet catch on things as she walks and then runs. She can’t move fast enough to close the distance.

“I’m sorry you had to wait so long,” Robin says when they meet, her voice as uneven as Sumia’s steps. 

It’s been so long that Robin sounds different than what Sumia remembers, but Sumia doesn’t have to pretend anymore, so when she half-falls into Robin’s arms, she doesn’t say she didn’t mind.

“I’m stronger than I look,” she responds as her voice breaks. 

There are other murmurs from an audience, tremulous and subdued, but it is only sounds, their faces blurred by tears that fall hot down her cheeks and blend into the thick hood of the tactician robes. The words don’t register. Not until she calms. 

She tries to kiss her, but she’s smiling through the tears and she knows it’s all teeth and salt, Robin choking back laughter in return. Everyone else laughs when she belatedly acknowledges the Exalt, her words jumbled as he waves off the concern. Then a hand slips into hers, soft as if born anew, in order to press into against the coarse skin of her own fingers. 

She doesn’t mind waiting as she is content in what has been and hopeful of what is to come.

**Author's Note:**

> This happened on a whim. I really like Sumia's solo epilogue. It's one of my favorites.


End file.
